Polyamory Continues to Go Mainstream in America

In the 1970's, when I was growing up, Redbook Magazine had stories on knitting, cooking and kids. It was a magazine that seemed to be in every doctor's or dentist's waiting room and seemed to espouse 'traditional values'.

Today we find an article in Redbook about polyamory written by a polyamorous woman who is married but happily falling in love and having sex with other men.  She says this behavior makes her happy because she is evolving as a woman.

Of course the headline of the article would make casual readers believe this extra-marital affair is actually making her marriage BETTER!...but in the 1st paragraph, she says they will probably divorce.

Ummm.....how is that making your marriage better?....when you will probably divorce?

What a ball of confusion our society has become....up is down, down is up, right is wrong, wrong is right and "better marriage" actually means "soon divorcing."

How ​Polyamory Made My Marriage Better

A few years ago, my husband, Rob, and I converted our traditional marriage to a polyamorous one. It's been remarkably smooth. We're very happy with our choice. And yet eventually we'll probably divorce. Does this mean that polyamory failed us? Not at all.

Like many of our generation, Rob and I are children of divorce, and so when we got married a dozen years ago, we designed a quasi-Buddhist ceremony that made room for the concept of anicca, or impermanence. We wrote our own vows and left out the "until death do we part" and "forsaking all others" stuff: Instead, we spoke about the inevitability of change and pledged to support one another as we continued to evolve.

We meant it, but we had no idea what that might look like. We didn't anticipate that our evolution could involve the desire for sex and relationships with other people.

But that's what happened. In our previous relationships and with one another, we'd both been serial monogamists, but after we finished having babies, we looked around and realized that although many things about our marriage were stellar—close friendship, mutual support and admiration, compatible co-parenting—we weren't ideal for one another sexually. We never really had been. Our libidos don't match; I'm more "sex motivated" of the two of us. Our relationship had thrived despite a lack of romantic chemistry.  


This is not an unusual revelation, of course, and in most marriages, it results in screaming matches, or swallowed resentment, or affairs conducted amidst lies and betrayals. But Rob and I didn't see our "problem" that way—we didn't even really see it as a problem. We saw it as a reality, and an opportunity for positive change. We became poly.

Poly people tend to view divorce in a less binary way than mainstream culture does. Dr. Elisabeth Sheff, a sociologist who studies polyamory, has written about how, in contrast to a dominant worldview in which a "successful" relationship is one which is "the two people involved remain together at all costs," polyamorists have a broader and more flexible take on the demise of relationships. "Poly people," she writes, "ultimately define their relationships as both voluntary and utilitarian, in that they are designed to meet participants' needs." We understand that the relationship might have to change when needs change. One of the people Sheff interviewed called this "moving apart without blame." Maybe Gwyneth Paltrow, with her "conscious uncoupling," was onto something after all.

In this regard, monogamous couples could stand to learn a thing or two from those of us forging an alternative path. For Rob and me, our guess is that having spent the last few years living poly will actually make dissolving the husband-and-wife phase of our relationship a lot gentler than if we hadn't taken that left turn at Sexytown.

For the last few years, most days at my house look like this: my partner Mike, who lives with us, helps me with dinner while Rob tends to the kids. We all eat together, and then Mike and I put the kids to bed while Rob texts a woman he's met on OKCupid. Once the kids are down, the three of us sit on the couch for a movie and a cup of tea. Sometimes Rob stays home with the kids while Mike and I go out dancing. Sometimes Mike and I stay home while Rob travels for work or goes on a date. Sometimes Rob and I go out to a play while Mike stays home. Sometimes Mike and I take the kids camping and Rob spends the weekend combing bookstores. Sometimes Mike and Rob watch football together while I volunteer. Sometimes we all take a family vacation together.

Our arrangement wouldn't work for everyone. It helps that, when Rob and I first became poly, our kids were very young, young enough so that this has pretty much always been their normal. It also helps that Mike didn't have kids of his own, but is great with ours: my kids say they have two dads. And it helps that both these men are tidy Cancers who share a love for progressive politics and sports blogs; they are also guys who have always enjoyed living with male friends. And they're wonderful, generous, thoughtful people who like each other, who love me, and who value the extra help and freedom that comes with having a third adult around: there's a symbiosis they have together. We might argue about stuff like what to feed the kids for lunch or who threw out the last of the conditioner, but I honestly can't remember a fight that stemmed purely from the fact of our poly arrangement.  

Practicing polyamory has helped us refrain from seeing this as a failure: failure to be everything to one another, failure to be people we're not. Like many of the folks Dr. Sheff has reported on in her studies, we're able to see a shift in the parameters of our relationship as an inevitable change rather than a reason for guilt or anger or blame. We love each other and we want each other to be happy, and part of being happy means getting our needs met. We want to support—not stand in the way of—one another getting our needs met, even if those needs involve reconfiguring our partnership. We know we can still be close and loving, no matter our relationship status. 

Here;  http://www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/a43318/polyamory-made-my-marriage-better/

Friends, I don't even know where to start on this article.

Their marriage starts with a 'quasi-Buddhist' wedding, after marriage and kids she gets horny so goes and finds a lover named Mike, and the father of her children, husband Rob, allows Mike to move into their home and start having intercourse with his wife in their bed!!  She claims the kids are thrilled because they have two dads!!

I wonder what will happen when Rob or Mike decide to bring home another woman they are in love/lust with?  Then the party will really get going!!  And then we will see how "tolerant" and "Happy" this makes our horny housewife!

Can you imagine how confused the children will be when the discussion turns to marriage?

Friends, who invented marriage?

God.

Who wants to destroy marriage and family?

Satan.

Marriage and family is the foundation of any civilized, God-fearing, society.  Satan already has America on the edge of anarchy and lawlessness and he knows with just a little more push he will make our kids even more depressed, suicidal and dysfunctional than they already are.

"Hey Master Demon....how is it going on our plan to crumble away at the foundations of America until it implodes?"

"Great King Satan!  We now have Americans totally worshiping their sports and so busy following sports they have no clue what the Word of God even says!  We have them so far in debt, chasing things they can't afford that we have all-but guaranteed they will always be anxious about everything!  We finally got gay marriage pushed through so now if you say anything FOR the way God designed it, you will be silenced and accused of being HOMOPHOBIC!  We have confused the sexes so now the states are passing laws making it legal for men to get naked in the the girl's locker rooms!  Now the final straw is if we can get men and women to quit marrying all together and claim its human nature to love and desire sex with multiple people....so monogamy will be totally thrown out the window!! Soon, America will say they have NO KING AND ANSWER TO NO ONE!  Then all the people will just make up all their own rules and do whatever they want!!

"Wonderful!  It can't be long now!  I personally have deluded the American Government to believe they can borrow as much money as they want and now have them up to $20 trillion in debt...with no end in sight!!  Once America falls away....we will finally be free to take out that miserable little nation called Israel!!  Carry on demons!  Great job!!  Mission 'Scorched Earth' is in full swing!!"

Hat tip to Julie E.